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Mitochondria and the iron project

I've just rewatched Terry Wahl's TED presentation on mitochondria. Terry Wahl is a doctor who developed Multiple Sclerosis and deteriorated to the point of being unable to walk. She embarked on her own research into MS, delving deeper and deeper into what is known about mitochondria, and developed an eating programme which restored her to active health. Now she campaigns the cause of vegetables, lots and lots and lots of vegetables. I've read about her before and found her story interesting and inspiring. I often think the focus in the media healthwise is far too much on what we shouldn't eat, to the neglect of the things which are very good to eat. Instead of bemoaning KFC and proposing fat taxes, I wish that souvlaki bars were more widespread. The proportion of veges to carbohydrate (plus the sheer yumminess factor) of a souvlaki is way way better than a KFC dinner box or a parcel of takeaways fish and chips. In my experience, bought food offers a valuable sanity window in times of stress, and the problem isn't fat, it is lack of vegetables.

I looked up mitochondria and iron overload on my friend Google tonight, but sentences like this:

In this issue of Blood, Nie and colleagues examine the role of MtFt in cellular iron uptake and distribution using a cell line stably transfected
to express the murine MtFt gene under control of a tetracycline-responsive promoter. (from here)
are still beyond my skill set to comprehend.

The latest iron reducing foods update:Chlorella:
When I was on my rheumatoid arthritis reducing eating mission (I despise the word 'diet'), I stopped taking the chlorella tablets as they didn't seem to make me feel so great. Last night I had another look at chlorella, this time in relation to iron. On this website, I learnt that indeed chlorella contains iron and is not a good choice for people with iron overload. The back of the chlorella packet also lists iron as a significant ingredient in chlorella. So no more chlorella tablets.

Turmeric:
I made oven-baked wedges for tea, with olive oil, turmeric and lemon and pepper (the lemon and pepper mix you buy in a Greggs packet from the spice shelf ). I cooked onion-garlic-ginger-bacon-peppers-carrot-spinach-silverbeet in a bit of olive oil on the stovetop to go with it, topped with slices of avocado and soem sour cream. I had my turmeric capsules at the end of the meal, i.e. with fat and black pepper.

I haven't done any sewing, or any gardening, or knitting. I did read Joanne Harris' Peaches for Monsieur le Cure in the weekend. I loved her older books, the ones including and written around the time of Chocolat, so this was just the perfect kind of escapism from a weekend of chilly weather and family ailments.

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